


Standing Up

by SickSadWorldLady



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-02
Updated: 2016-12-02
Packaged: 2018-09-06 01:36:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8729557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SickSadWorldLady/pseuds/SickSadWorldLady
Summary: Mon-El continues to discover powers he didn't know he had: love and courage.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place during season two, episode six.

Understandably, his sense of physicality remained muddled. A step too hard or a grip too tight sent nervous fluttering around him. Generally he could control it. A light mind meant a light step. If he simply proceeded unencumbered he’d be fine.

 

Now there was only him, and the question of who he was in this new world proved too much sometimes. He was an outsider with a bred fear of outsiders. An extrovert isolated from people. A survivor never meant to survive.

 

Kara, Winn, Alex, J’onn, all these new faces wanted him to be something. A superhero. Whatever that was. A man who risked everything to save someone to whom he had no loyalty.

 

What if that wasn’t him? What if he couldn’t measure up to a person that never existed. What if he wasn’t built to stand up unquestioning, just because.

 

No matter. He couldn’t think about it. When he lingered on the who, he lost control of his strength. Simplicity allowed him to blend and it was easier to blend than to accept reality. Earth wasn’t so different from Daxam. He could get by and wasn’t that what everyone wanted? To get by, to stop the gnawing, have some fun.

 

He took another sip of rum. Through the liquid fog he caught her smile from the other night. Unburdened with the weight of humanity and in a disguise one only accepted because he wanted to, her self-righteousness abated. She was beautiful, there was no denying that. He wanted to be around her, even when she was chastising him and forcing him to be more than he was, when he didn’t want to be around anybody, he found himself wishing she was there nonetheless. Truthfully, he thought it was pretty clear he wanted her. From his limited experience, flirting on Earth was more or less indistinguishable from Daxam or Krypton. Did she really not see that he stayed to drink with her despite other’s advances, the smiles he gave just to her, that he fought his every impulse to not disappoint her even if it didn’t always look like it.

 

At first it was definitely for sex. It had been 35 years and she was familiar. Humans looked the same as she and him, but the refinement of learning his own strength and biology took work now and he just wanted one thing to be easy. Kryptonians may be self-righteous and snobbish, but he was certain they weren’t above sex for pleasure. So yeah, it was about sex. Easy sex that didn’t expand his vocabulary or require every thrust to be pulled back in fear of causing harm. It was, anyways.

 

When he saw Kara earlier, waxy, eyes sunken, nearly unrecognizable he mostly felt ashamed. Deep down he believed Alex when she said she’d be fine eventually. He’d hurled every bit of force he had at her and she’d barely upped her heart rate. She’d be fine. She had to be. That was apparently who Supergirl was. But he couldn’t stop the memory of her disappointment the last time he’d seen her. He didn’t think it was fair. He hadn’t asked for any of this. He had lost everyone he loved or cared about, and after surviving the journey, he was just discovering that was only the first part of his survival. So it wasn’t fair to ask him to risk his life even more for citizens about which he knew nothing. Still he had no one else, nothing else, and that look--even if he didn’t agree with her--killed him. When he heard what happened, saw her lying motionless and deformed, he couldn’t handle it. He ran. The person who cared about him most at this point was critically wounded trying to save the planet, and the last thing she thought of him was he was too cowardly, too self-obsessed to help her, to care about her.

 

Slightly woozy, he stared with laser focus at the empty glass of rum willing it to fill itself. When it didn’t, he tapped it gently, or so he thought, sending it flying into the back wall of the bar, just narrowly escaping the bottles of alien liquor stacked on the shelf.

 

If he didn’t stand up now how would he face her again, how could he look into her eyes and see only disappointment staring back. He was sure he wasn’t ready, positive he’d get his ass kicked if neither Kara nor J’onn could stop this guy, but he had to try, partly for her and partly for himself. There was no Daxam anymore. It was either make a new life here or give up entirely, and he’d never been a quitter.

 

Mon-El stood up, urged on in no small part by the look from the bartender as glass ricocheted off the wall. A giant parasite shouldn’t be too hard to find. This new world seemed to have no shortage of menacing figures, but he figured tracking the screaming and destruction seemed easy enough.

 

Minutes later he found himself staring down the most terrifying sight he’d ever seen. He wasn’t ready for this, but there was no turning back now.

 

“Stop!”

 

Parasite turned his way, revealing the enormity of the situation.

 

”I regret this already,” he muttered to himself.

 

Regret, however, was a wasted emotion, and one for which he didn’t have time. Grabbing the nearest object he ripped the sign from the ground, running as fast as possible as he launched it toward Parasite.

 

He did momentarily have one other regret, though, he really wished he’d ask Kara or Winn to teach him some bad words on this Earth right about now.

 

The pole didn’t seem to do much, but for no explicable reason other than probably lunacy he decided to run at Parasite anyways. Lunacy it was. He felt Parasite’s hands, claws, fingers, whatever they might be, smooth yet almost sticky, close around his neck as he lifted him high into the air. Somehow in the scenarios of dying back on Daxam, being choked to death by a power-consuming alien never entered the fray. For that he was relieved. Breath seemed to both escape and become trapped inside him simultaneously as Parasite’s grip wrapped tighter and tighter.

 

Then, without warning, he felt himself free fall, hitting the ground with a speed that would have killed him back home.

 

Quickly scrambling backward he noticed the dark figure suddenly behind.

 

“Please tell me you’re on my side.”

 

The figure barely had to time to speak, only letting him know he was Guardian, not terribly helpful, before Parasite was on the move again. This time the figure was able to shield Parasite off, sending him soaring into one of those non-flying vehicles humans used to get around.

 

It wasn’t enough. Parasite jumped back, grabbing a different vehicle and heaving it toward the chaos, and more specifically a young girl not quite comprehending the situation. Somehow he made it to her in time, not processing the thought that drove his body into action, balancing the vehicle above him and urging the girl and her mother away.

 

He dropped the vehicle safely away from anyone, ducking as Parasite once again made his way down the street.

 

Parasite stopped midway down the street as Supergirl zoomed by them. She was back. Back to battling the creature who had nearly killed her earlier. And he was oddly petrified. In theory, Supergirl didn’t lose. That’s what he kept hearing. She was stronger, faster, more powerful, but he had seen what had happened earlier and the sunken person that was once Kara. He trusted Supergirl; he was terrified for Kara. He desperately wanted to plead with her to just get rid of Parasite, his heart stopping and starting with frantic pace as she tried to level with a creature that had felled her once already.

 

He couldn’t do anything, however, so he just listened, and when he did her words didn’t sound as though directed to the violent creature in front of her, but like she speaking directly to him. Reasoning with him that he could, in fact, do it.

 

His heart remained ensconced in chest, but just barely, as she baited Parasite toward her further. Acidic blue electricity coursed through the beast threatening to combust, until it did just that. In a flash Parasite was gone and his remnants shot out in every which direction.

 

As the dust died out around them, he saw her emerge.

 

“Is he?”

 

She nodded slightly, continuing to stride toward him. “You showed up.” A hint of a smile, just the tiniest of ones, danced to her face.

 

“No one’s more surprised than me.” Which was probably true, although he’d bet Alex would be right up there with him.

 

“Thank you.”

 

It was a small sentiment. He hadn’t actually done anything, as he was sure she could discern from the scene, but it made it seem even more worth it somehow.

 

He could never be Supergirl. Behind Supergirl there was Kara, and Mon-El was no Kara. They were a different mold, not oppositional, but certainly different. He wasn’t going to suddenly stop wrestling with his allegiances or turn into a bubbly coffer for the citizenry. The best he could do was use his newfound strength for good when needed. He wouldn’t be able to wrap it in a pretty package, and he’d never be able to live up to the image Kara had painted in her head. He could try, though, to be a better person, to be there for people, and let others in. He’d have to do it for himself. Kara pushed him, but ultimately he had to want this for him. Even so, her thank you hadn’t hurt. He liked making her happy, proud. That crinkle she got near her eyes. It made him feel, well he wasn’t quite sure. It was beyond wanting to mate or have sex. His heart began to pound thinking of that smile, a dull electricity pulsing down his bicep and through his forearm. This feeling, warming and slightly painful, nearly indescribable but as real as any physical pain or pleasure he'd endured, was new for him. It was all new for him.


End file.
